Our first week in the Philippines – labeled Launch week –
was spent at Kids International Ministry in downtown Manila.
Misconception of the Month:
I thought Tagalog (the national language here) would be
spoken AND written all over the place…
Reality Check:
Tagalog is spoken…but the written language is mostly
English! I think I’ve only seen one sign out of at least 500,000 that I
couldn’t understand! Also, communication isn’t too difficult here. Even if
someone doesn’t speak a lot of English, they understand it well enough!
Launch week was a little overwhelming, but amazing at the
same time. Michael Hindes and Allison Johnston led the last bit of our
training/worship, and we spent a lot of time getting to know our teams and
squads a little better. It was a relaxing place to get over jet lag and
acclimate to the 15-hour time difference. We even got a surprise the first day! AIM staff loaded us up in vehicles, and took us to a beautiful waterfall for the afternoon! So refreshing!
I think the overwhelming part was just being in close
quarters with 80 other people, but that will be over tomorrow when all our
teams head to different ministry sites for the remainder of the month. (More on our ministry in the next blog)
Trivia!!
What are two major forms of transportation in the Philippines?
(provide your guesses in the comment box below)
The answer will be placed randomly in another blog this
month 😉
Random discoveries:
*Coffee Jelly is sold in drinks at Asian Starbucks…it’s
basically coffee jello in the bottom of your latte =P (it’s pretty good btw!)
*The people here are SOOOO friendly! Honor is huge in Asia,
and the Philippines are no exception. In some ways, this country is safer than
America, because everyone is looking out for each other, and treated with
respect! It does bring up one
problem though…the answer to everything here is “yes” (even when it shouldn’t’
be), because it would be dishonoring to tell you “no”. For example, the
Starbucks near the airport says it’s open 24 hours a day….yet their hours are
12pm -12 am. LOL…something about that just doesn’t add up right =P
*Mosquitoes are not really that bad here, and Malaria is very
uncommon. (Thank You, Lord!!!)
